uS BRITISH INSTITUTIONS OF TO-DAY
element in the administration was to be confined to
the membership of advisory committees, which still
assist in the adjustment of relief in accordance with such
factors as local rents and (in country districts) local
customs about allowances in kind and other matters.
Thus the main responsibility for the long-term
unemployed and their dependants (except as regards
medical needs) has been transferred to the central-
ized Assistance Board, a body of officials whose
decisions cannot be challenged piecemeal, even in
Parliament. In some respects the new Board tightened
up administration (e.g. it enforced a Household Means
Test requiring persons in employment to contribute
to the support of unemployed members of their own
households—a very thorny problem), but it is only
fair to notice that in other points, such as allowing the
unemployed to earn small casual sums for themselves
without forfeiture of relief, the new policy is more
generous than the old. Their general scale of relief
amounts roughly to 313. a week for a householder
and his wife; from 155. 6d. to i8s. for other inde-
pendent persons of full age; and from 6s. to 95. for every
dependent child under sixteen, plus an allowance for
rent. In spite of a rise in the scale, total expenditure
declined during the war years, when the rapid expan-
sion of employment transformed conditions in the
Special Areas, and there was a widespread hope that
after the war Social Insurance would render poor
relief in the old sense superfluous (see below, p. 190).
§4. EDUCATION
There are many other services in which the State
and the local authority collaborate—every time a new